The Lord’s Joy is the strength of the Godly!

January 19, 2016

Psalms 374 Delight yourself in the LORD; And He will give you the desires of your heart.

Everybody loves to have a good time. We all look forward to that office party or a Christmas or New Year’s party or even a wedding for that matter and there is nothing wrong with that. However, life’s events are like a bunch of things that fly past you and if you want to shoot down your game, you got to align your desires with what pleases God i.e. your will in line with God’s will, which is like the foresight and hindsight of a rifle. Unless these are aligned your life shall always experience those consistent moments of emptiness and lack of substance.

Jeremiah 923 Thus says the LORD, “Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches;24 but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the LORD who exercises lovingkindness, justice and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things,” declares the LORD.

I am so moved to write on the Joy of the Lord, which is something I have found immense strength in. For the Joy of the Lord is the strength of the Godly (Neh8:10) and to know the Lord Jesus Christ (Phil4:13) in this manner is to possess the unyielding perseverance of a living spirit, given us by the Holy Spirit from the merit of Christ who accomplished the salvation of His elect. This is Christian motivation, where at the apex of such joy is gratitude (Col3:15-16); unlike those who live to please themselves with monetary love, fornication, drugs and drunkenness, only to be left feeling squeamish at the height of their foolish pleasure.

Isaiah 4031 Yet those who wait for the LORD Will gain new strength; They will mount up with wings like eagles, They will run and not get tired, They will walk and not become weary.

John 15 (Jesus says)5 “I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.

So for those who are interested in knowing what it takes to delight in God, you must know, it first requires you to desire God, and the Bible says that you will only have that, when God gives it to you, not otherwise (Jn3:3&6:44). If you do not know God, you will only be moved by the current trend of what people generally perceive about God, which is something Jesus is not quite interested in (Mk8:29) because unlike the apostate religions of this world, believing in Jesus means having personal and intimate relationship with God and that does not involve a one size fits all carpet policy (1Cor12:4-20).

John 14 (Jesus says)15 “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.

James 214 What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him?15 If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food,16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that?17 Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.

Some of you may know that love by definition is not merely a feeling but a verb, which is a state of action. Such is saving faith, it goes beyond mushy feelings concerning God to doing what pleases God and absolutely enjoying it because the Joy of the Lord is the strength of the Godly.

Rom 108 But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart”–that is, the word of faith which we are preaching,9 that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;10 for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.

For those who are drawn to know God, you must realize that to know God is to love God. It is with any relationship that to know a person intimately… their likes/dislikes (am not talking about sexual immorality), is to explore love in all its substance and depth. Like a man and a woman who catch each other’s eye and go about getting to know each other, if they are serious. So too it is with the Godly, who are moved to know more about God from the Bible (Ps34:8), for so they have relished morsels of God’s goodness and begin to hunger for the company of Christ (Mt18:20) through the knowledge of Spirit inspired scripture (2Tim3:16-17).

Psalms 348 O taste and see that the LORD is good; How blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!

1Jn 4 (check this up with Jn15:5)16 We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.…19 We love, because He first loved us.

Love makes any person feel supercharged and that is how it is to truly put your trust in the Triune God Almighty, who is Love. Just as one is given to do things and please whom they love, so it is with the Christian, who is given to live by Godly conduct, which is according to God’s good pleasure. This love is not merely a puff of vapour that disappears with the wind but a truth/fact that explains our very existence under the grace and mercy of God (Eph2:8-9), displayed absolutely in the redemptive works of the Lord Jesus Christ (1Jn2:2).

Gen 128 God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Col 119 For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him,20 and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven.

Adam may have borne the misfortune of the fall but in Christ the stewardship of man is renewed, in being reconciled to God. For where Adam failed, Christ pleased God in being obedient even up to the point of death (Phil2:8). The earth thereby looks forward to these who believe in Jesus (Rom8:19), who are received as sons and daughters by God for Christ sake (Jn1:12). Such is the good pleasure Christ merited for all the elect unto God.

John 146 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.

To conclude, you ought to pray, asking Jesus to help you yield to God’s good pleasure and therein relish the course of your life through every trial because the Joy of the Lord is like a gyroscope that helps you in any given situation to maintain an orientation that is healthy and fulfilling in God who is Sovereign over all.